Om Mathur to assess BJP workers’ preparedness for panchayat election
LUCKNOW: State BJP in-charge Om Mathur would begin his four-day visit to Uttar Pradesh from Tuesday to take stock of the party’s preparedness for the panchayat polls.
Several former party MPs and MLAs are eyeing a BJP nomination for the polls at the grass roots.
Mathur, who is seeing these polls as an attempt to make inroads in rural UP, would begin his tour in Meerut where he, along with state unit chief Laxmikant Bajpai, would review the election strategy for west UP.
Though these panchayat polls aren’t fought on the party symbol, the BJP has decided to announce candidates for the rural election.
The rural tilt is targeted at expanding the party’s reach in the villages to break out of its image as a predominantly ‘urban party.’
Despite losing several by- polls in UP since the Lok Sabha polls in which the party won 71 of the 80 seats in the state, the clamour for a party nomination for these rural polls hasn’t dimmed. “There is tremendous enthusiasm among the party cadre for contesting these polls,” said state BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak.
“Nearly 300 of the 403 assembly constituencies in the state have a completely or partially rural character. So the panchayat polls would obviously help us connect with the villagers,” says the party’s panchayat elections in-charge Shiv Pratap Shukla. The BJP leaders have already met the election commissioner (local bodies and panchayat polls) to demand that central paramilitary forces be used in the rural elections.
The rural polls are important for the BJP as the party plans to use the occasion to connect with farmers. Till recently, the party was busy battling opposition charges of being ‘antifarmer’ because of its stand on the land bill. Sources say the larger idea is to use the occasion to build the party’s presence at the village and gram panchayat levels as also to occupy the ‘opposition space’, wresting it from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The effort would also help the party get its cadre in ‘battle ready’ mode for 2017 UP assembly election. The party has already demanded that the election observers be from outside the state.
After taking stock of the preparedness in west UP on Tuesday, Mathur would travel to Etah, Kanpur for similar reasons before he arrives in Lucknow.